Locker Rooms and Fun with Shampoo

One of the things to get used to here is personal privacy - or lack thereof. When you go to the gym to work out or swim you are quickly sucked back into that high school experience of standing there in front of your locker trying to dry off and get dressed as quickly as possible without too much "sharing" with the other ladies in the locker room. Their comfort zone, on the other hand, is very different. They're all standing around there naked as a jay bird (I have no idea what a jay bird looks like, but I think I heard my grandma say that once) chatting with each other, walking around the locker room, coming and going from the sauna and hot tub like they're home alone. I, on the other hand, am not there yet. I'm still standing in the corner trying to figure out how to dry off with one end of the towel while holding the rest of the towel over as much of my body as possible. Then the REAL fun begins. Trying to get dressed standing on a wet floor while wearing shower shoes, getting your legs through the legs of your jeans without getting them wet (or on the wet floor) and without your bare feet touching the floor with God only knows what living in the moisture on the floor, all the while trying to hold the aforementioned towel as much in front of you as possible. Who needs a yoga class?

I hear from my friends who have been here a while that the fitting rooms are equally fun. A room full of naked women all just standing around trying on clothes like they're alone in their bedroom trying to decide which outfit to wear today. Gee, I can't wait to go clothes shopping with my new friends! Talk about REALLY getting to know each other! Maybe I should rethink joining that yoga class after all....

(And now we interrupt this blog for a China factoid:
A size small in the US is a size extra large here. Great!
And now... back to our blog entry....)

But wait! There's more fun in the locker room! If you want to take a shower they have provided those lovely liquid soap, shampoo, conditioner dispensers in each shower stall. Nice! Here's the problem.... I figured out the conditioner is in the middle, but is the shampoo the one on the left or the one on the right? It's labeled in little Chinese characters. I have 2 problems with that. #1, I don't read Chinese characters. #2, it's written really tiny, so even if I DID read Chinese, I'm not in the habit of wearing my READING GLASSES in the shower! Hey, ya' think my driver will come in the ladies locker room and interpret that for me too? All that to say, I may or may not have washed my hair with liquid body soap and my body with shampoo. Luckily I have my Chinese bottle of Pantene in my apartment shower.

But wait.... there's MORE fun with the Pantene! Again, it says Pantene on the bottle, but everything else is in Chinese. This Chinese/American labeling is like a Chinese game of charades. I purchased a 2-pack with a large bottle and a smaller bottle. My guess from experience at home was that it was probably a shampoo with a smaller bottle of conditioner. Who knows? They're marked in Chinese characters. So I get in my shower and squeeze some from the larger bottle into my hand. Hmmm. Very creamy and conditioner-like. No lather on my hair. So I try the smaller bottle. Also very creamy and conditioner-like. So I call out to Rob (so as not to track water all over our white floors creating even more of a magnet for dirt) to bring me one of our bottles of shampoo we liberated from the hotel the week before. Ah, hotel shampoo, for that "nappy headed ho" look! I then proceed to wash my hair 3 times with the hotel shampoo (yes, it takes 3 times with the junk they give you from the hotel), then turn to my larger bottle of Pantene to condition my hair. Here's the thing. Apparently it is a cream formula of shampoo that just takes a little more working and water to get up a good lather. But on my now CLEAN hair I have enough lather to wash half the heads in China! So now I'm washing my hair for the FOURTH time. Now time to find out what's really in the smaller Pantene bottle. Is it really conditioner (which I desperately need at this point after the hotel shampoo), or a smaller size bonus bottle of shampoo suitable for travel? Let's find out, shall we? Much to my delight, it was conditioner, and my original guess at the store paid off. I am happy to report my hair was back to "normal" after 10 days living in the hotel using the hotel shampoos and conditioner. Now at least I'll have good looking hair the next time I'm in the ladies locker room doing the flamingo shuffle with my towel.